**Which Form of Power Does Academia Truly Seek?

Academic Authority, Institutional Politics, and the Crisis of Knowledge in the Global South**

 

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Citation; Jinadasa, M. (2025). Which form of power does academia truly seek? Academic authority, institutional politics, and the crisis of knowledge in the Global South. Manoj Jinadasa Blog. https://manojjinadasa.blogspot.com/2025/12/which-form-of-power-does-academia-truly.html

 

Synopsis

This article interrogates the fundamental nature of academic power in contemporary universities, asking whether higher education institutions truly seek authority grounded in knowledge, research, and theoretical inquiry, or whether they increasingly reproduce power through personalised, factional, and party-aligned institutional politics. Focusing on state universities in Sri Lanka and situating them within broader Global South contexts, the article argues that many academic institutions have entered a profound crisis of authority—one in which power has become detached from epistemic labour and scholarly contribution.

Drawing on critical social theory—particularly Michel Foucault’s analysis of power/knowledge, Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of the academic field, Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony, and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality—the article demonstrates how colonially inherited institutional structures continue to normalise rivalry, loyalty-based advancement, and factional governance within universities. These practices undermine theoretical disagreement, marginalise intellectual dissent, and convert academic appointments into sites of political struggle rather than recognition of scholarly distinction.

The article contends that this condition is not merely a failure of university governance but an epistemic and moral crisis that threatens the very purpose of higher education. By privileging institutional survival, positional dominance, and group allegiance over research excellence and intellectual courage, universities risk eroding their capacity to generate independent knowledge and contribute meaningfully to social transformation. The article concludes by calling for the reclamation of academic power as epistemic authority—rooted in rigorous scholarship, evidence-based debate, and theoretical innovation—arguing that such a shift is an urgent ethical and institutional imperative for universities in Sri Lanka and across the Global South.

 

Introduction

 

Which form of power does academia truly seek? Is it the power generated through intellectual debate, rigorous theoretical disagreement, and scientific inquiry, or the power produced through personal, individualised, party-aligned, camp-based, and cluster-driven institutional politics of hatred and rivalry?

 

This question is not merely philosophical. It speaks directly to the lived realities of universities in Sri Lanka and, more broadly, across the Global South. Despite their declared commitment to knowledge production, research excellence, and intellectual leadership, many state universities remain deeply entangled in persistent academic quarrels rooted in institutional power struggles. These struggles frequently devolve into personal, private, cluster-based, or party-oriented group politics, most visibly around appointments to positions such as department heads, Deans, Vice-Chancellors, and governing bodies, including university councils and management boards.

 

In the contemporary academic landscape of 2025, such conflicts raise urgent concerns. Why do state universities and research institutions continue to reproduce personal animosities, rivalries, and factional body politics that undermine scholarly life? Why do institutions tasked with producing knowledge remain trapped in what appear to be unresolved, colonially inherited, and institutionally destructive forms of power? This article argues that these dynamics represent not simply governance failures, but a profound crisis of academic power—one in which authority has become detached from knowledge, research, and scientific understanding.

 

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Academic Power and Institutional Decay

The dominance of personalised and factional power politics has critically harmed the development of state universities and other public knowledge institutions. Instead of cultivating the power of theoretical argumentation, empirical inquiry, and intellectual debate, universities increasingly prioritise corrupted body politics rooted in colonial and feudal legacies of rivalry and exclusion. As a result, meaningful academic disputes grounded in theory, evidence, and research are marginalised, while institutional manoeuvring and political alignment are elevated as primary modes of authority.

 

Faculties—particularly within the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences—have for decades been preoccupied with sustaining group, party, or cluster-based power formations. Rather than nurturing environments in which scholarly authority is earned through research excellence and theoretical contribution, many institutions have become locked in cycles of historical resentment and rivalry-based politics. This has produced a culture in which academic survival often depends more on affiliation than on intellectual merit.

 

What state universities and public research institutions urgently require today is the deliberate cultivation of knowledge, science, and research-based theoretical disputes—intellectual quarrels that sharpen understanding, expand epistemic horizons, and contribute to social transformation. Instead, many institutions remain trapped in colonially inherited, corrupted, and hatred-oriented modes of institutional warfare, where battles are fought for petty power, precedence, and positional dominance rather than for ideas.

 

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Theoretical Context: Academic Power, Knowledge, and Institutional Politics

The crisis of academic power can be theoretically grounded in the relationship between knowledge and power as articulated by Michel Foucault. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) and Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (1980), Foucault challenges the notion that power is located solely in formal authority. Instead, he argues that power operates through discourses that define what counts as truth and legitimate knowledge. As he famously states, “There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge” (Foucault, 1980, p. 27). From this perspective, universities are not merely administrative organisations but key sites where power is exercised through the regulation, validation, and circulation of knowledge. When academic authority becomes detached from research and theoretical inquiry, power ceases to be productive and instead disciplines, silences, and normalises conformity.

 

This misalignment of academic authority is further illuminated by Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the academic field. In Homo Academicus (1988) and The Field of Cultural Production (1993), Bourdieu conceptualises universities as semi-autonomous fields structured by struggles over symbolic and intellectual capital. Ideally, academic power should derive from scholarly distinction and epistemic contribution. However, when academic capital is converted into political or factional capital, appointments to positions such as Head, Dean, or Vice-Chancellor become outcomes of institutional struggle rather than recognition of intellectual authority. Bourdieu warns that this misrecognition erodes scholarly autonomy and weakens the field’s capacity to generate independent knowledge (Bourdieu, 1988, pp. 84–86).

 

The persistence of such practices can be understood through Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony. In Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971), Gramsci argues that power is sustained through the production of consent, where dominant practices become accepted as “common sense.” Within universities, factionalism, party alignment, and personalised rivalry become normalised academic culture. Junior scholars are socialised into these arrangements, learning that institutional advancement depends on loyalty rather than intellectual courage. As hegemonic cultures reproduce themselves, theoretical dissent and epistemic innovation are marginalised.

 

A powerful normative alternative to such power politics is offered by Jürgen Habermas in The Theory of Communicative Action (1984). Habermas distinguishes communicative rationality—aimed at mutual understanding through reasoned debate—from strategic rationality, oriented toward domination and control. Universities should embody communicative rationality, privileging evidence-based disagreement and theoretical critique. When academic disputes become personal and factional, communicative rationality collapses, signalling a crisis not only of governance but of the moral and epistemic foundations of higher education.

 

These dynamics are intensified in postcolonial contexts, where universities continue to operate within institutional frameworks inherited from colonial governance systems designed to reproduce hierarchy and elite control. As a result, institutional power often becomes an end in itself, detached from the social responsibility of knowledge production.

 

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Conclusion: Reclaiming Academic Power

 

The central task of universities and scientific institutions should be to produce impactful research, scholarly writing, and theoretical innovation that meaningfully shape society, culture, and global knowledge systems. The true power of academia lies not in administrative authority or factional dominance, but in its capacity to influence social, cultural, political, and economic life through rigorous knowledge production.

 

Sri Lankan universities—and institutions across the Global South—stand at a critical crossroads. If faculties, particularly in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, continue to operate within colonially inherited, feudal, and elite-driven power structures, institutional decay and intellectual stagnation will deepen as we move further into the 2030s. Conversely, reclaiming academic power requires a decisive shift toward epistemic authority: valuing research excellence over loyalty, theoretical debate over personal rivalry, and scientific understanding over positional dominance.

 

Universities often claim to engage with the power of knowledge, information, and advanced research. Yet these possibilities remain unrealised when institutional energy is consumed by petty, individualised, and party-political struggles. Such politics do not strengthen universities; they erode their intellectual credibility and undermine the transformative potential of academic knowledge itself. Reclaiming academic power today is therefore not optional—it is an urgent ethical, intellectual, and institutional imperative.

 

References

Altbach, P. G. (2004). Globalisation and the university: Myths and realities in an unequal world. Tertiary Education and Management, 10(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/13583883.2004.9967114

Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo academicus (P. Collier, Trans.). Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature (R. Johnson, Ed.). Columbia University Press.

Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Polity Press.

de Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Pantheon Books.

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.; C. Gordon et al., Trans.). Pantheon Books.

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, Eds. & Trans.). International Publishers.

Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action: Vol. 1. Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon Press.